Office 2010 has a few great new features and improvements which make sharing and collaboration easier than ever.

OneNote Web Application

You can now create OneNote notebooks through web browsers and have other people to view, edit and collaborate anywhere. All notebooks created online will be saved to SkyDrive so you will need to have a Windows Live ID.

OneNote Web Application is free, just like other similar live service Microsoft has delivered over many years (hotmail, messenger). To get start with OneNote Web App, go to http://office.live.com and logon with your Windows Live ID. OneNote Web Application has familiar OneNote interface so you don’t have to learn it.

SkyDrive is live with OneNote Sync, you can now go to Office.live.com and start upload your OneNote files. Office Web Apps on SkyDrive are available free for personal use.

When you creating New Notebook in OneNote 2010, you can now save it to SkyDrive directly. To get start, you will need to have a Windows Live ID, and sign in when you are asked to. Notebooks will be automatically synced among different OneNote clients if they are online.

System tray icon reappears every time OneNote is started, how to turn it off?

Turn off OneNote System Tray Icon

Go to File, click options, and then click display tab, uncheck Place OneNote Icon in the Notification Area of the Taskbar.

Note: Turn of OneNote icon in taskbar also turn off OneNote Snap Tool, if you wish to use Windows key + S to bring up OneNote Snap Tool to capture screenshot, you will need to have option Place OneNote Icon in the Notification Area of the Taskbar marked.

Update 5-22 The equivalent in OneNote 2007 is Go to Tools, and click Other and then uncheck Place OneNote Icon in the Notification Area of the Taskbar

Turn on OneNote System Tray Icon

Change Place OneNote Icon in the Notification Area of the Taskbar option back to marked will get OneNote System Tray Icon back.

You might see OneNote failed to start with following error message displayed

OneNote is unable to start. This may be caused by insufficient hard drive space or by insufficient write permissions for OneNote’s notebook cache files in you user setting folder. Try to delete any unnecessary files from your computer and then try starting OneNote again. If this message persists, contact your system administrator. Error code: 0x45DContinue reading OneNote Is Unable To Start

I previously used Alt+PrintScreen key for screenshots and then pasted into MSPaint and then edited the picture, and then capture just part of a screenshot. Now a better way is install Microsoft OneNote and take screenshot via the WinKey + S and then select the portion of the screenshot you want and paste anywhere.

Note: this option also available under menu “Insert” -> “Screen Clipping”

OneNote 2010 has a new feature, it remembers notes you’ve read and highlights new changes since you last read. All new unread content on pages will be highlighted with green highlight. This is very helpful for people who use OneNote for team collaboration. Everyone can easily see what exactly others has added and/or contributed. The pages contain unread content will have bold text in tab and all unread content will be highlighted in green.

New page with bold text tab

New content with green highlight.

I recently upgraded to Office 2010 BETA and I notice an annoy bug in OneNote 2010.

There is a feature in OneNote 2010 which will highlight unread content after notes are synced between two PCs. However, it can’t detect whether those content is read or not so the green highlighting will stay there forever.

The workaround is right-clicking on the notebook and choosing to Mark as Read. By doing this you tell OneNote I read it and please remove the green highlighting. This also makes unread bolding go away.